Flood Preparedness: Norfolk

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered flood preparedness in Norfolk.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am delighted to have secured this important debate on flood preparedness in Norfolk, and I am pleased to see colleagues from across the county and across the parties. The hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) has long championed the issue, and I am pleased to join him in the fight. The challenges that we face are so significant and have such an impact that we have to come together to tackle them. I am pleased to be able to facilitate that today.

Norfolk’s seas and waterways are one of our country’s greatest treasures. Our rivers are enjoyed by many for swimming, paddling, kayaking and canoeing. The Norfolk broads are a much-loved national park: a unique waterway that nurtures flora and fauna, and keeps alive a great tradition of sailing and navigation. Our coastline and seas are precious for local residents and drive our tourism economy. They even brought a visit from the Liberal Democrat leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), who enjoyed a dip in the sea in Sheringham with me during the election campaign.

Norfolk’s landscapes are also low-lying and flat, filled with farmland and floodplains. While that combination of waterways and low-lying land contributes to Norfolk’s being the most beautiful county in the country, it presents a perfect storm for flooding problems. Hundreds of years ago, the Norfolk broads were simply a huge estuary. Work over the centuries has tamed the waterways into what they are today, but without continued work, nature will simply return our area to the North sea. In the words of my local water management director, we have to “make maintenance sexy!” The Romans began the work, and it would be a tragedy if this were the generation that finally gave up. Not on my watch.

There are very few areas of Norfolk that are not afflicted by flooding concerns. I hear worries from residents all over my constituency, from councillors and colleagues around the county, and from the agencies that work so hard to alleviate such problems.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

My constituency is a long way from my hon. Friend’s, but it is criss-crossed by rivers. Last month my residents suffered an inundation, when we had a month’s rainfall in one day. Does he agree that one of the challenges is the lack of co-ordination between the multitude of agencies that have responsibility for this area? Does he also agree that the legacy of the last Conservative Government was the underfunding of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and of local planning authorities, which affected their flood prevention activities?

[Steff Aquarone]

I agree with both of my hon. Friend’s points, and I will speak about them in a moment. My hope is that by solving the issue of joined-up working in Norfolk, we can transport that model to his constituency and elsewhere.

A key motivation of mine in securing a debate on this issue at this time was the important public meeting I chaired recently in Hickling. Nine different agencies sent their representatives to share the work they are undertaking to prevent flooding in the area. They also told us of their personal fears and frustrations. They spoke of the challenges with the funding system and our changing climate, and of the regulations and responsibilities that are stymying their ability to make change.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. He is right that there are a multitude of agencies that have partial responsibility, creating a network of overlapping duties and responsibilities. We are lucky in Norfolk that we have the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance, under the capable directorship of Henry Cator, a constituent of mine. Will the hon. Member take this opportunity to congratulate the alliance and Mr Cator, and will he focus on the absolute importance of strategic dredging, particularly in the Norfolk broads?

[Steff Aquarone]

I thank the hon. Member for his work on flood prevention, and I absolutely echo his sentiments. I will be quoting Henry Cator in just a moment. He was on the panel I mentioned, and I pledged to him and others that I would support them in tackling all of this. That meeting allowed the agencies to hear directly from local residents about their experience and knowledge of the area, developed over decades, and to factor it into their plans and ensure that the community and relevant agencies work in lockstep as they bring forward a more flood-resilient future for the affected broads villages.

Residents of North Norfolk have endless stories of how flooding has impacted them and their community. I heard from a business owner in the boating industry who has spent £40,000 fixing the impact of flooding on the marina that she manages. Another local business estimates that it lost out on £140,000 of revenue during a period when it could not operate because of flood damage. Even the most basic things are made harder: one resident apologised to me that their response to my invitation to the meeting I mentioned was delayed because their driveway was flooded and impassable for the postman.

In the short term, we must look at the fundamental issues across all levels of government that have allowed the situation to get as bad as it has. The agencies I met with are working incredibly hard, but they can only work with what they have. A major issue that many of them face is that their funding settlements are rarely delivered more than one year ahead.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I also live far away from Norfolk, but Somerset obviously has a record of flooding—in fact, it is named Somerset because it was the county where people lived in summer. Environment Agency data shows that 2,692 properties in my constituency are at risk of flooding, and unless basic maintenance is conducted on drainage and flood-defence systems, the figure will continue to rise. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for the Environment Agency to have a £34 million deficit in its maintenance budget?

[Steff Aquarone]

I totally agree. Lots of money is already there, not to mention the stuff that is missing, but we have to use it in a more joined-up and strategic way. I could go on, but I will return to my speech.

The projects that need to be undertaken to make a real difference will take time, but they will have a huge payoff. Being forced into short-term thinking means that the responsible agencies cannot make secure plans to take the strategic actions they need to. I hope that the Minister will consider changing the arrangement to give the responsible agencies the ability to set longer-term budgets. That would be a huge boost to their medium and long-term planning, and could get off the ground so many vital flood-alleviation projects that are being stalled by the current funding set-up. As the chair of the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance succinctly put it to me:

“Prevention is a lot less expensive than flooding.”

In fact, every pound spent on prevention prevents a further £14 of damage. I hope that the Minister will seriously reflect on that, particularly in the light of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke).

Frustratingly, in many cases, it is not just the money that is lacking, but the necessary power to make change. The responsibilities and powers are broken up and siloed across councils, agencies and statutory bodies; all of them have expertise and experience, but it cannot be easily shared between them. I ask simply but kindly: why does it take nine months and two public meetings to decide what to do and how to spend the money we already have? I would love to tour my constituency bringing the kind of meeting I mentioned to every community, but that is simply not the most effective way of delivering the action that residents are crying out for.

The Netherlands has a Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management: a clearly responsible Department with the power to tackle an issue that is fundamental to that nation. We must accept that Britain floods—it always has done. A joined-up approach, with a clearly responsible body, is the only way we can ensure that powers are collected sensibly to allow for funding and direction decisions to be made in the best interests of communities.

Let us take a look at how flood prevention actually functions in the area that I and my Norfolk colleagues represent—I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a Norfolk county councillor. Norfolk county council is the lead flood authority, but it does not have the money to tackle the issues that it reports on. The council’s scrutiny committee considered that just yesterday, and concluded that there needs to be a focus on legislation to make it fit for purpose. After every serious event, it writes useful, sensible and impactful flood prevention reports, which outline how to prevent flooding from happening again, but once it finishes its reports, it has nowhere near the necessary money to implement any of its own recommendations.

That set-up would be utterly farcical if it were not so serious. It seems that my residents need all the stars to align to make anything happen, and that will not cut the mustard as water pours into their front rooms and destroys their belongings.

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving some excellent examples, particularly from the Netherlands, which is wonderful at water management. Like him, many across my constituency have to deal with the impact of flooding year after year. Does he agree that to tackle flooding, we must improve the management of land upstream, including the restoration of peatlands, heathlands and native woodlands, and that our farmers are great allies in this quest?

[Steff Aquarone]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In my experience as a county councillor over the past seven years, I have seen changing attitudes in the farming community, with farmers having moved from wanting to get the water off their land and into the river system as soon as possible, to wanting to build attenuation methods upstream and upland to help prevent flooding further downland, but they face planning barriers and all sorts of other hurdles that make that practically unviable.

I want to touch on the issues faced by our farmers in North Norfolk. As well as talking to me yesterday about inheritance tax changes, many farmers raised concerns about how flooding impacts their land. Access to the farming recovery fund seems, to my farmers and me, to be scattergun and confusing; the restrictive criteria mean that some are receiving payouts for land that has hardly been touched by flooding, while not receiving anything for land that has spent months underwater, simply because they are either lucky or unlucky with DEFRA criteria and algorithms.

William, a farmer in my constituency, told me yesterday that he had 30 acres of potato crop waterlogged for months on end, and totally unharvestable. He lost £100,000-worth of potatoes, but received no payout because he was told his land was not eligible. We know that our farmers operate on the slimmest profit margins to feed our country, and flooding is yet another challenge hammering them and their businesses. Norfolk’s farmers feel that they are being punished by the quirks of the system, and are in the dark about how to get the help that they need.

The Minister has heard me raise a lot of problems so far, but I want to reassure her that the Government can achieve some quick wins. There are some things with simple solutions. First, we need to ensure that the insurance landscape for flooding is viable. I am appreciative of the Flood Re scheme, but we must ensure that it will achieve its mission to create a risk-reflective pricing model by the time it exits the market in 2039, and that it covers all types of flood risk, including coastal erosion, which rapidly eats away at the North Norfolk coast.

I also feel that we need to place a greater duty on our insurers to carry out the actions in flood prevention reports after incidents occur. Insurers currently put properties back to the state they were in before the flooding, rather than being required to support residents to ensure that the flooding cannot happen again. For example, why are insurers replacing ankle-height sockets in properties they know could flood again, when logic would dictate that they need to be moved higher up to protect them in the future? My residents have been left in a scenario where they know what needs to happen to prevent future flooding, but the actions are not forthcoming. It is totally unacceptable, and I hope the Minister will indicate that she is open to reviewing this area of law, if that is the reform we need to fix these issues.

There is a very real human impact of the failings of this set-up. I have spoken with one of my constituents who has been flooded twice, forced to move out of her home for months, and still struggles to secure the changes she needs to avoid yet more flooding. Anglian Water is responsible for increasing the drainage capacity, the highways department is responsible for trying to redirect the water flow off the road away from her property, and her insurers have to help her piece her life back together again. All those agencies and organisations have been unable to secure funding or have been limited in their powers. She will want to hear from the Minister today an assurance that she will not carry on falling through the cracks and being a repeat victim of predictable problems, and will finally receive the long-lasting solution she needs and deserves.

Whenever we discuss damaging floods, which are becoming all the more regular, we must address the elephant in the room that is man-made climate change. It is no coincidence that we see more extreme weather events, storms and flooding when our climate is being so drastically damaged. If we do not deviate from the course of climate crisis, resilience measures will become obsolete as the emergency worsens. The current modelling on what we need to prevent and alleviate flooding looks backwards at data and trends from the past, but climate change is bringing extreme weather and flooding that we have never seen before. If we cannot handle what has gone before, we do not stand a chance of tackling what has yet to come. We have to incorporate the climate emergency into our thinking on this issue far more realistically.

Norfolk is proudly at the cutting edge of the green energy transformation that we need to fight climate change. We are proud to be playing our part in saving the planet, but if the homes of those working on these projects, and the businesses and suppliers for them, are flooding, and the infrastructure itself is at risk of flooding, we cannot help. We want to play our part and we need the support to do so.

I hope the Government can think holistically when tackling the challenges of flooding. It is not just an environment issue; it impacts our local economy, our emergency services and our health systems. I fear the cost of failure here simply is not understood, but I can assure the Government that they cannot afford it. While we are talking about Norfolk today, improving flood preparedness across the country will positively impact so much more than just the people whose homes and businesses are flooding today.

This challenge is immediate. The time for waiting around and delay has long passed and we are staring down the barrel of a tough—and possibly disastrous—winter. This is not about just protecting the highest possible number of chimney pots, but preserving a beautiful, historic natural landscape and a way of life that has served Norfolk for generations. I hope that as the Government listen to the contributions in this debate and consider their future actions as a result, in the forefront of their minds are the affected residents and business owners, villages such as Hickling and Potter Heigham, and the communities begging us not to carry on with the status quo.